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Dan Agosto: How do you program your MIDI (keyboard, mouse, other) and what sort of processes do you use to create realism in your instruments?

Justin Lassen: I use keyboards for the bulk of the performance, and all kinds of knobs and faders to control all the other MIDI expression elements- pedals, pitch wheels, etc. I even use a Yamaha Breath Controller, to create more realistic string or wind instrument performances. The MOTIF8 has come in handy for all kinds of neat performance techniques. The XP30 has the best after-touch and the ability to crescendo each patch, in a really natural sounding way. I also do heavy layering and panning, to map out my entire sonic sound scape and ranges. This includes not just picking a combo-patch and playing a theme, but rather, composing out each instrument. I also use a bunch of reverb plugins, and have created custom chains that match live venues I’ve performed and recorded in. You can’t always rely on one reverb plugin to get the job done right. The room is the star of the show for me. If you get the room all wrong, your music sounds betrayed. I have a lot of cool libraries, but I think the trick is to use them in moderation with live instruments. I’m a big fan of running the audio signal, even from a soft-synth, through external amps or hardware, to sweeten and give that imperfect human touch. I like the audio to always have a bit of dirt.

I also like to have fun with foley. I’ll use slamming doors and other found-sounds within my composition, or maybe run a violin through a series of stomp boxes, or 2 overhead mics running through a series of reverb units.

Sometimes I’ll run the strangest sounds through an assortment of hardware and software plugins, just to create a new patch in Dimenson Pro. Instead of drenching everything in just vanilla reverb, muck it up in a mod-filter plugin, or a few of them. If Mozart were alive today, and I sometimes suspect he is and quietly inhabiting Robert Miles body, I bet he’d want to create orchestras that are even larger or weirder than he ever had access to, and digital makes this possible.

Even with soft-synths I like to mic the output of a soft-synth into a speaker and re-record the performance in a different environment and get a unique reverb that no plugin can give you. This works in catacombs or basements.

Which do you end up using more, hardware or software synths?

I use hardware and software synths equally. Except for portability, hardware is usually the best. You don’t have to deal with latency. You load up a patch, and it plays as it was intended just about instantly. If I want a sweeter sounding cello that only a soft-synth could supply, I’ll take the midi performance and bump it to a track running the software synthesizer. A lot of times I’ll have tons of songs completed inside the hardware synthesizers sequencer, and I can take that data into Sonar 6.2 and flesh it out even more.

When you are done putting a piece together in the composition program (Sonar, FL Studio, Acid Pro, etc) what is the next step?

After it is all ‘together’, I bump every single track (audio and midi) to high-res .wav’s, rendering all plug-ins, soft-synths or record takes on each track, so that during final mix-down, there are no oddities, surprises or unexpectedness, and I’ll get a truer sense of where the mix sits, digitally. I’ll then save the session file to a new name/version number and delete all of the MIDI data, and throw away all of the plugins and effects, so that there is only pure audio. At this stage, I can put a Tack EQ filter on each track, and automate the final touches, without sucking any CPU resources that the removed plugins and soft synths would have strained on the system. This helps me to get a feel for how it will actually sound all together. Once I’ve found an excellent mix, that works evenly in headphones, laptop speakers, studio monitors and of course the car test, and the track isn’t clipping at all, and still sounding full (and doesn’t have to be pumped to the ceiling at this point, even as low as -6 or -7db with some tracks). I’ll bounce it all to one final high resolution master file and begin the tedious mastering… Or what was once tedious, but is now fun?

I’ve done it both ways. I’ve done it with state of the art Mastering Engineers like Tom Baker (whom I absolutely think is the best, or atleast, my personal favorite), as well as figuring it out myself, which wasn’t always as easy as it is today. Software is making it even more possible to get clean recordings out quickly. I remember when I had no idea what a plugin was, so I kept re-recording a track, trying to mimmick a sound quality of a favorite CD and was always baffled why the EQ knobs on my mixer were not doing all the cool stuff I was hearing in my favorite records. When I finally figured out what a plugin was, and this was when they were just starting to come out. It hit me like a brick. When I learned what a compressor plugin was… My recording world flipped upside down. Here I was hooking up seven amps to create a wall of guitar sound, going through seven mics, when all I really needed was a few good compressor plugins and some relatively easy stereo imaging and panning.

You have to be careful with plugins, mastering is such a fine art, a delicate art, and those are the kind of engineers that I have the most respect for, and depending on what genre of music you are doing, will decide ultimately how loud or soft the final mastering will be. It’s easier with Classical music because you don’t need to compress the hell out of the beats like in pop music for instance. You want more air, you want more depth, more dynamics, you want the quiet moments quiet and the loud ones loud, especially when doing chamber or concert style recording; so you try to leave as much of the original room and sonic quality of each track as possible, and obviously clean it up with some smooth but subtle master reverb. With rock remixes, you want more umph, so that’s a different animal all together.

I recently completed my third set of Synaesthesia compositions, which will be released in May. It is the continuation of the break out successful and popular first two sets, which were released on CGSociety (May 2006) and with 3D Creative Magazine (October 2006). I just got the latest Sound Forge 9.0, and the box had 4 wicked plug-ins called the Izotope Mastering Suite. A smooth limiter, EQ, Reverb and Multi-Band Compressor, that worked beautifully together as a chain. It was easy. The presets were a great starting point, which I had to mess with a little to match the orchestral tone and texture I was going for. It didn’t color the audio and kept it as I had originally recorded it, and just kept it nice and smooth with more dB and power. I think people sometimes get carried away with things like the L2 and slap it on the whole mix and call it done. We all know the L2 is breathtaking, but I felt I had more control over shaping the final audio with this particular suite. I’ve always loved Izotope ever since their free Vinyl plug-in, and I look forward to more world-class stuff from them. After getting a good mix, I saved my presets and effects chains in SF9 for future uses, and modified them slightly between the 8 compositions to get a cohesive feeling to the set. Although it could never beat the work of trained mastering engineers; It was fun, easy and totally professional sounding. SF9 also has a new feature where you can submit your tracks to Sony to have them master it over the net, which is a pretty great idea. I love how they have turned AP and SF into a thriving collaborative community by giving us publishing tools, charts, forums and countless other perks. Simply put, in my opinion, Sound Forge is and always will be the Photoshop of the audio world, period.

For more on Justin's work visit his livejournal blog.